Carmel Liburdi's Insomnia Slumber Party

New Carmel Librudi Album is out Nov 3rd

Carmel Librudi's a true vocalist. For the Detroit singer/songwriter, it's all about inflection, intonation, and a carefully threaded curve of the melody that evocatively communicates the sentiments of the stories in each of her songs. I can't remember hearing someone speak out a verse so mellifluously - it's birdlike, the way her flow can fly through a chorus with a sweet assortment of notes but then glide down for her signature patter of conversational-sounding pattering.

And Liburdi is also a true storyteller. The focus is the words. Her acoustic guitar fills in a pleasing rhythm, but the focal point is the funny anecdotes, the painful confessions, the poetic self-deprecation, the honest appraisals, and that congealing, ever-more-securing sense of self. Listen to the eureka-moments she manifests in "Genuine Creep..."

"Genuine Creep" is the closing song on her newest album, tentatively titled Insomnia Slumber Party, which comes out November 3rd. The release party is at the Korner Bar in Hamtramck, featuring an acoustic set from Nina & The Buffalo Riders, Greg Mulkern (aka Banjoelectric), and J. Navarro & the Traitors.  

Over the last five years, Liburdi has written and released several albums of her own material, performed on just about every stage around Detroit, and even gone out on a handful of national tours. Though her presentation of a single voice and acoustic guitar might suggest coffee house-open mic-folk aesthetics, she's weaving together so much more, with a twangy warble of country to her voice at some points, segueing to an almost rapped or spoken-word cadence. The emotion eloquently sewn into her songs to that post-emo-but-pre-indie-pop balance of something like Neutral Milk Hotel-meets-Jenny Lewis.

But what shines most of all on this, her fifth album, is the strength she attains by claiming, owning, or even defeating her flaws and vulnerabilities. Even if you hear a sad song from Insomnia Slumber Party, you, the listener, still feel better. And it's all in the way she puts it... These songs are all about finding how to say that one thing, something that was just unutterable out loud, or some emotion you couldn't pinpoint. Liburdi has all of the cards on the table and makes it sound graceful in the way she's able to vocally shuffle them all back together, even if the deck's still slightly out of order.

When the record's ready, when you can hear more of these songs live, I'll particularly suggest "Not For Consumption." It's a trotting rhythm on the guitar, just a waltzing kinda Americana warbler, but her voice waves across the range of just talking to you, or crooning, or even soaring through a falsetto. And she sings:
"I'm here... in the now...I don't know why and I don't know how / turn me on / flip the switch and get out.... oh, tell me why do I lie to myself? / Trying to believe that you're some-body else? / But you're not, and you'll never change..." 
And that's the warning you gotta heed with Librudi's style of folk songs... Don't be the one who can never change.

More info: http://carmelliburdi.com/index.html
https://carmelliburdi.bandcamp.com/